Oil and natural gas, or carbon dioxide sequestration wells often utilize wellbore components or tools that, due to their function, are only required to have limited service lives that are considerably less than the service life of the well. After a component or tool service function is complete, it must be removed or disposed of in order to recover the original size of the fluid pathway for use, including hydrocarbon production, CO2 sequestration, etc.
To facilitate removal, such tools or components may be formed of a corrodible material so that they need not be physically removed by, for example, a mechanical operation, but may instead corrode or dissolve under downhole conditions. These tools may be formed by molding, forging, extrusion, roll forming, or other methods that can heat and compress the material. Machining may be necessary in order to provide an article having the desired shape and dimensions.
Despite all the advances, it is still challenging to form corrodible articles having complex structures. In certain circumstances, to manufacturing an article having different corrosion rates or different properties in different directions, it may be necessary to produce separate components and then joining the components together to form the article. Thus, the art is receptive to alternative methods of manufacturing corrodible tools, in particular methods capable of making a corrodible tool having gradient or anisotropic properties. It would be a further advantage if such an article can be made in one piece without the need to join different components together.